


5,000 Word Short: Like Maric (Dances in Darkness Canon)

by HigheverRains



Series: HigheverRains' Short Stories [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Dances in Darkness, Eideann Cousland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 07:04:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10736607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HigheverRains/pseuds/HigheverRains
Summary: Loghain's POV on the fight with Eideann Cousland (Dances in Darkness Canon). Lore-friendly.Part of theDances in Darknessseries.





	5,000 Word Short: Like Maric (Dances in Darkness Canon)

They had been playing this game for a long time. Since he had first laid eyes on her at the King’s Camp at Ostagar, he realized with a quiet understanding that every move since then had been their assessment of one another. The nobility had never served him, and even if Maric had made him one, the nobility had only ever gotten in the way. He had killed them, and seen them die just like any other man, and he saw no reason why, after everything else, the Couslands should have been any different.

A foolish thought, he realized now, understanding that for once, in the midst of everything, he had been outplayed. This was no betrayal, not truly, though the look in Anora’s eyes as she stood across the way made him sigh. 

He had seen this coming for over a year, and he should have seen it for longer. He should have understood.

A Cousland always does their duty. That was their motto, was it not? Fereldens had to earn the respect they demanded. No man could be raised king simply because he thought himself such. They had learned that in the war, as they took the fight to Meghren. They had learned that the price of tyranny was a constant vigilance, and a ferocity that demanded that those in power bend the knee and serve the will of the people, not the other way around.

In the beginning, he had seen the foolish boy in Maric Theirin. He had stumbled into his arms, bloodied and afraid, and told him he was someone else, that Orlesians had killed his friend. It had not been Orlesians, but fellow Fereldan nobles, and they had not killed his friend, but his mother, the Rebel Queen. Loghain had taken far too long to understand why his father had bent the knee, had sacrificed his life so that Loghain might save Maric. In truth, there were days that he still was not quite sure. 

But then there were days he caught the way that people looked at him, with a mixture of hero worship, fear, and awe, and knew what it was to need hope, to be inspired. 

That was the role then. He had said as much to Rowan, had he not.

“I can’t be his Queen,” she had told him, her voice tattered and full of pain.

“Then be Fereldan’s Queen,” he had said, and in the end that was all that mattered.

It was not in the nature of people to remember. No one was grateful, so gratitude was a poor reason to take action. Loghain had always been the sort to recognize when losses should be cut, to let things go and let things be, to trim the hedges and turn to new plans. He had done as much at the Battle of Redcliffe, when he had concocted a plan to sacrifice a cadre of knights so the army might turn and engage the enemy in full strength. He had not intended to play the part himself until it became entirely clear that he was going to have to. As he had run into his own ambush, held the bluff against the Orlesians that had rode at the ridge and slain them almost to a man, he had realized in that moment that the promises of the nobility mattered, that those men who deserved respect earned it.

That had not ever been Maric. They had been friends by the end, but never, not once, had he believed that Maric Theirin was hard enough to rule Fereldan and understand the sacrifices that sometimes had to be made. But Queen Rowan had understood. It had been Rowan who had saved him, just as it had been Moira Theirin that had given Fereldans hope – including his father Gareth – in the years during the occupation. 

Fereldan’s strength had never rested on the line of Theirin men, but on the steel brought to bear by its Rebel Queens. 

He’d been a fool, hadn’t he? He saw Eideann Cousland standing there, and all the world behind her, and he remembered at the last just what it meant when the Bannorn loved you, when you could turn every noble in Fereldan on a monarch. 

After all, he had been there when they had done it. It had been Rowan and himself buying up those nobles. It had been Maric and himself beheading the traitors that murdered Queen Rowan. He had helped bring Meghren down, in a slow progression of the years. 

The quiet smile on his face as he slowly reached now for his sword was shattered with the memories, echoes reaching back out of the past. 

Of course. 

It was no different. He had challenged Rowan once, and their fight had been hard-won. Loghain had been an archer, not a swordsman, and yet they had fought almost to a draw. He had won that match, beaten the Warrior Queen of Ferelden, and everyone had loved the spectacle. But between them it had been more, had it not? 

She had been wearing a red dress too the day he found her at Gwaren, tears on her face. She had been looking every inch the fire he saw in Eideann Cousland now. 

It was like looking through a mirror backwards into time. He was standing there before a slew of nobles, all of them thinking that here, that now, they would be better than he. And he was facing down a nobleman’s daughter, who had lived her whole life understanding that she was going to have power.

How many others were raised never having to fight for the right to be heard, for the right to live, and live free. A flicker of anger crossed over his face. 

That was not fair, he knew. His own daughter…well…his own daughter still felt six years old and running in pig-tails to him. Eideann Cousland was younger still. Children, playing at war.

Cailan was Maric’s son, when all was said and done. He had taken after all the lighthearted frivolousness that had made Maric infuriating. He had thought himself some great leader, destined because bloodline made it so. He had filled his camp with those like him, men of noble birth who had long forgotten the sacrifices made in the war. He had been willing to forgive Orlesians, to set aside Anora in favor of a Fereldan-Orlesian alliance brokered with its Empress as his Queen. He was a boy, a foolish boy. Just like Maric had been. 

Maric had not seen at first the cost in lives of those who followed, and when he did, he had taken it upon himself to feel the pain of them all, instead of honoring those sacrifices in the only way that Loghain knew: making them count for something. He had let people die for him at Gwaren, and across the Bannorn, at Redcliffe, and at River Dane. His son was willing to let them die almost to a man at Ostagar, to spend the lifeblood of Ferelden on glory and honor, as if that lust for power and praise could ever prove a good enough reason. 

Maric had learned, in the end, that hard work was necessary, and so was sacrifice. He had learned it because his betters had paid the price for him, time and time again. Gareth Mac Tir, Arl Rendorn Guerrin, Queen Moira Theirin, Arl Byron Howe, entire fields of men whose names he would never know, and entire Legion of the Dead, his spy-lover Katriel, and even, in the end, Rowan herself. Each of them had been laid at the altar of Maric’s kingdom, sacrificed for the symbol of what Maric and the Theirin bloodline should be.

And now it was his turn, then? So that some bastard who had no idea of what ruling was about, who was firmly in the pocket of this Cousland chit, who had never in her life had to fight for the things that mattered like food, like survival itself. She had been raised in castle halls. She was the darling daughter, was she not, pampered and pretty, with training at arms, and a harem of men who would fall to her, just as it had been with Anora.

But that was not true either, was it? He was lying to himself if he thought that Rowan had been different. He had raised Anora with Rowan in mind, wanting her to be the Queen that Rowan had been, the Queen Ferelden needed. Ferelden needed its Queen strong, fierce, smart, and capable of wrangling the Theirin bloodline.

And could he stand there and say that Eideann Cousland had not stood against his men time and again, had not outmaneuvered him? Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps in this, he was playing Rendorn Guerrin’s part, the quiet concerned overseer who saw some upstart that was not good enough. Perhaps in this particular place, Eideann Cousland was Rowan herself, or perhaps she was even him.

The thought did not sit well. And yet it was a comfort. Maric had the power to inspire. It was what he had done best. Charisma had never been Loghain’s strong suit, and the Theirin boy, Cailan’s half-brother, Maric’s bastard son looked the part, playful and unprepared as Maric himself had been. He looked as fierce as a puppy, but he stood there in regal armor, and he looked like Maric. He _was_ Maric, or at least his legacy. To those nobility, that was the blood of Calenhad the Great. To Loghain he was another fool. 

But Eideann Cousland…that was a different thing all together. They looked at her and saw the Flame of Highever, the daughter of the Seawolf and the Soldier, from a line as old as Ferelden itself, and older, and they respected that. But what they loved about her was not her blood, or even her age. It was that she had held that promise. 

Eideann Cousland had always done her duty. 

He had seen her at the war table in Ostagar, the way she held herself, a solemn representation that was a pale shadow of her father, or so he had thought at the time. But he realized now that she was no more a pale shadow of her father than Rowan had been the shadow of Rendorn. She was ferocity and fire, catching and burning, setting everything alight. She had won Cailan’s respect, and the Grey Warden’s respect not by right of birth but in the same way Loghain himself had: by being smart and recognizing the advantages and disadvantages. 

He had left them on the field to die. People died in war. It happened. Everyone was equal in that. No noble blood could save you. You fought, and sometimes you died, and sometimes you had to save what you could. In truth, the Battle of Ostagar had reminded him too much of the Battle of West Hill. They had lost an entire army there, and he had learned from that. 

He and Rowan had left her own father there to die when they went to save Maric. This time he had chosen the army, not the king. He had chosen Ferelden, not Cailan. The country mattered, not the noble son. 

But in that choice, he had kicked off a series of events that had gone from bad to worse. He had forgotten, in the years between, how much the Theirins meant to Ferelden, how much Cailan had meant. While he was trying to consolidate power, rebuild an army, any way he could, sinking to more and more desperate measures and blockading the border against the Orlesians so they could not conquer them again, Ferelden itself had been wracked by grief at the loss of its king. 

Its Theirin King. The last of the bloodline of Calenhad the Great, or so they thought. 

He had made a miscalculation, the same one he always made. He had moved in numbers, and forgotten that sometimes one had to move in symbols, in figureheads that could serve as a rallying point for a cause. He was not himself enough. Neither was his daughter. The harder he pushed, the more power he tried to take to see them safe, the more the damn nobility fought him, the more they grew angry and rebelled. He had killed their king, they decided. He had left Cailan to die. Nevermind the battle couldn’t be won. Nevermind they needed to fight now more than ever and the battles were not yet complete. He had betrayed them, and even those who sided with him watched him with suspicion. 

Eideann Cousland had gone at Ostagar with Maric’s bastard to light the beacon. And they had lit it. He had seen it flare, and turned his troops away. But that beacon was not extinguished simply because he turned his back. It burned bright there in that room. It was holding a pair of swords, one of them the Cousland blade, and the other a silverite Warden blade. It was wearing the armor of the Grey Warden, the ones who stood against the Blights. He knew the stories. He didn’t believe them – any many could do the job fine. He didn’t believe this was a Blight. Not when the last Grey Wardens to enter Ferelden had kidnapped Maric away.

But even he had to admit that the woman before him now was not the child he had thought she was. When he had tried to settle this with an assassin, with a bounty, by trying to outmaneuver her, it was she who had outmaneuvered him. He had been through the Deep Roads, but so, it appeared, had she. He had fought darkspawn – and watched them die – but so, it appeared had she. He had wrangled the Ferelden nobility, wrested Redcliffe from the hands of the Orlesians, marched into war for what he thought was right. So, it appeared, had she. 

And when it came to it, the fools in the chamber now had decided that in the end the one who they would follow now was not the Hero of River Dane, but the Flame of Highever. 

A trial by combat then, a final arbiter. If she could beat him here, if her heart was truly in it, if she could do what none of the other nobles had in turning her blades against him and defeating him, in bringing him down, then…then he would believe, just for a moment, that she was in any way Rowan’s equal.

His sword glittered as he hefted it, and then the fight began.

She was quick. She was young, and she made mistakes, but she was quick. His initial attack was a foolish one, born of the belief that she would perhaps be as loose around the edges as Cailan’s form had been. But he should have known better. He had not seen her fight, not personally, but she must have done to make it out of Ostagar, and she had taken that tower. And she had been fighting him from afar for the better part of a year. She was a Warden, and they recruited the best, did they not? He did not know if Maric’s bastard was worthy of that honor, but Eideann Cousland was, because as she spun, blades singing through the air, he felt a rush he had not felt in a very long time.

Someone who could finally match him. Someone who was taking this seriously. The fire that burned in her gaze, cold as the Waking Sea as it was, was one he knew well. It was the same that burned in his own. The same that burned in Rowan’s. There was none of the warmth of the Theirin’s there. Hers was temperance and ferocity. And she knew what she was doing.

He was forced to block her next thrust, circling about as she turned. Her blades twisted, and she was moving again, light on her feet, dancing like tongues of flame across the floor, like her movements were to catch the carpet beneath them alight. Loghain was a strategist, but she matched him, and he found himself engaged in the strange task of truly assessing her, as if this were not a fight for the end and more a dance, a training exercise, that he might somehow teach her more from it. 

He intended to win, but now he was not entirely certain he could.

About them, the Landsmeet cheered and roared. Cries of anger and retribution rang out. He suppressed all those thoughts, pushed them aside, focused in. He was a little proud to see her doing the same. 

Her mother and father had won the Battle of Denerim for them during the war, sinking Orlesian ships in the waters about the capital and sealing Meghren’s fate once and for all. He had been a fool to think that she could not do the same, sinking his supporters one by one, until he stood alone. Even Anora, his darling Anora…even she had turned on him.

Eideann Cousland had played a long game that Cailan would never have been able to achieve. He recognized that as he stepped back, bringing up his shield to knock away her next strike. Cailan had been a boy. Cailan had thought of glory, of idealistic goals like bringing peace and unity to Orlais and Ferelden. He had been ready to set aside Anora in favor of the Orlesian Empress in hope she would send him men, as if it was the role of the Fereldan King to go begging on his knees for Orlesian mercy. He had wanted to fight on the front lines, to throw his life away in some final attempt to win a name for himself, to live up to the legends of all those around him like a fool. A young fool. 

Not this woman though. She had scrabbled through Ostagar, and done her duty, kept her promises, had she not? She had won over the dwarves when his own emissaries could not even get inside. She had elves on her side, like he had once had. She had even garnered the trust of the mages at the Circle of Magi, who had insisted during Maric’s rebellion on staying neutral in spite of everything else. 

The irony that she had won every one of them except Bann Ceorlic, the one man who had every reason to hate Loghain for cutting off his father’s head as a traitor for murdering the Rebel Queen, did not escape him. He knew when he could not win a fight. But he had to try. Because there was no one left, save Eamon who would try to use them, save this bastard boy who had no business ruling anyone, and all of them were so young.

Too young. 

Still just children.

The impact of a sword at his armor, tearing through a strap broke him from those thoughts. For the first time in a long time, he was forced to focus. So he did, and when he did, it was almost like he was not looking at Eideann Cousland anymore, but at Rowan or at Maric, at a symbol larger than just who she was.

It made him…sad. But it also made him respect her.

In the end it only took one step wrong for her to gain the advantage, and she did not waste it. He felt the impact a the back of his knees knocking him down to the ground. He watched his sword clatter from his gauntleted hand, and slide across the carpet, and then she stomped his shield from his arm. And in those moments he felt what he had felt in the Chantry the day Maric had called the nobles who had killed his mother to face justice. He felt the sense of righteousness he had felt when Maric had stabbed his sword through Katriel, the sword that sat now in his bastard son’s hand. 

Eideann Cousland was not done. She bent, her swords at the back of his neck. 

“Enough,” he said, and meant it. And slowly the swords drew back. He watched her then, circling him, like she were assessing him, considering. There was the softness of Bryce Cousland in her eyes, he noticed, and the hardness of Eleanor too. He gave a quiet sigh, struggling to catch his breath, and suddenly feeling very tired.

He was not looking back into the past. No, he was looking into the future. He had done his part. Now…now it was time to pass on that torch, wasn’t it? He had thought, after everything, that Ferelden still needed saving, and it did. But he was not the only one who could save it. He looked at her a moment longer, wondering if Bryce Cousland had ever had the chance to speak to her the words that she should hear. 

“I underestimated you,” he said softly. “I thought you were like Cailain, a child wanting to play at war. I was wrong.” So very wrong. She was no child. Ferelden’s might had always been its warrior queens, from Trydda Bright-Axe, to Morrighan’nain, and all the way to Moira and Rowan. Anora had never inspired like this woman inspired, but she was clever and fast. Eideann Cousland was faster, though, and Loghain knew it. 

_Please, don’t hurt my daughter for all that has been done in my name,_ he thought. Some things demanded no mercy. Other things insisted upon it. 

He looked up and met her eyes.

“There is a strength in you that I have not seen anywhere since Maric died,” he said softly, meant just for her. He had not seen it in Maric’s sons, in Eamon or Teagan, or even Bryce Cousland’s heir. All of them were soft, born in peace, not bred for war. But this girl – this woman – she was not like them. She shook her head, eyes narrowed, and he saw that the way she was looking at him was not a look of anger but disappointment.

_I am sorry I am not the hero that the stories told you I was, girl._

“Yield?” she said, and her voice was quiet enough that only they could hear. “Do you have any idea the destruction you have wrought? You were so afraid of losing Ferelden to Orlesians, you lost it already to everything else, to things much worse. An Orlesian occupation did not taint the land black with Blight. An Orlesian occupation we can fight. The Blight? It threatens the world.” True, but he had not believed that Blights were things that simply were. He still was not entirely convinced, and if it were a true Blight, it would not be beaten in a year. It would take a proper force, a real military strength. This was the end of his war, but only the beginning of hers. 

Orlais _had_ tainted the land, had stolen everything. How many heads had decorated the gates above the Palace before Meghren was felled? How many good men and women had gone to their deaths in pursuit of the right to be free of that yolk? 

But perhaps she was right, in the end. After all, she had gotten this far, convinced so many, that perhaps he could not argue. He did not think of darkspawn as the worst things – he had seen the Deep Roads, and lived through them, and thus they could also live through a Blight. But…the rest of it…

She was not done.

“When Maric gave you Gwaren, ancestral seat of the Theirins, he did not mean for you to use it to destroy all your built. But that is what you have done.” He watched her sink down into a crouch, until they were level with one another. This was a conversation between people who understood one another, in the end. 

She was this bastard boy’s Loghain, wasn’t she? This bastard boy’s Rowan. Eideann Cousland was the steel behind the Theirin softness. He should have seen it sooner. Even as far back as Ostagar, it was she who had had the backbone. She had been the one to advise Cailan at the end.

“A Teyrnir is earned, it is never given,” she said, and it carried weight, because he recognized its truth. “You may have been the Hero of River Dane, but we do not live in that world anymore, and it is never enough to demand people follow you because you have served as their general once. People follow because you earn their loyalty. And the duty of those who lead is to serve. Forever. Even at the cost of their own lives. A Teryn is not a regent, powerful and reigning and demanding loyalty. A Teyrn is a servant, who sacrifices everything of themselves to save everything else. We do not get to choose that. We have a duty to everyone in Ferelden to defend and protect and do what is right.” He gave a quiet shake of head. He had always been called to make sacrifices for Maric and his ilk. He had given up everything for Ferelden, until there was nothing left to give. His freedom, the best years of his life, his best friend, the woman he loved, the lives of countless men, women, and children, and even, in the end, his home. Responsibility had never suited him in such a way – he did his duty but not with a smile. He had never been the person that people liked. He had been the one who got things done. 

He had been the man who proved to the people who needed to see it that the nobility was not untouchable, that Meghren was not the only man who could kill an aristocrat. 

Loghain Mac Tir could too. Nobility was no shield from that. 

But then, she understood that, didn’t she, if her words meant anything at all. She knew that this life was not one that anyone should want. 

“Slavery? Torture? The massacre of Cailin’s advisors? The betrayal at Ostagar, where you pried those floor tiles loose and let the darkspawn come in? I lit that beacon; you never came. Good men died that day, and many, many good men have died since. And those deaths are at your feet and mine. But at least those who died because of decisions I made, I can live with. Your regrets are proof that you cannot live with those choices, because you never made them in good faith.” He had though. He had done everything he had thought he needed to. Heavy-handed, and too sharp. She was subtle, where he was forceful. He was a scout, a ranger, a tracker. He had been a farmhand’s son once. He was never made to be a Teyrn, and when Maric’s ship had been lost at sea, and he had been summoned to fill the vacant space where once Rowan and Maric had stood together, he had been woefully unprepared. His regrets were old things, far older still than anything else. 

But he had always tried.

She did not know that. Most did not know. He had made heavy-handed mistakes, he knew. Inviting Tevinter in to contend with the elves? Or trusting Arl Howe because Rendon’s uncle had died in Maric’s service? Or sending envoys to Orzammar expecting help because Maric had forged strong ties with Orzammar before, visiting with Cailan on occasion in honor of the Legion of the Dead who had helped them fight. He had attacked the Circle of Magi before, and this time hoped to bring them to his side, desperate for the need to bring the mages to heal before they left everyone to die again. He had ordered the Bannorn to submit. He had tried to put an end to Eamon because he knew the man was too close to all this, and a poor influence, all said and done.

All of that was wrong. He had never had the hand of a stateman. He had always moved quickly and bluntly. He could not do what she had done. He simply gave a soft sigh as the pronouncement finally game, as she pushed herself back up.

“Teryn Mac Tir, as Teyrna Cousland of Highever, highest affirmed rank in the Landsmeet at this time, I sentence you to death for the crimes of treason, slavery, attempted assassination, actual assassination, torture, dereliction of duty, and refuse to abide by the decision of the highest governing body of the land.” It sounded so official on her lips. “You will die for what you have done.” 

He did not even hear the Warden call a halt to the proceedings, the one from Orlais who had come to spy, and who he had had locked away. He was busy mulling over the pronouncement, trying to understand her words. He wanted to laugh at them, in truth. 

Loghain Mac Tir, guilty of tyranny and treason. In the end the whole thing had corrupted him after all, turned him into the very thing that Ferelden hated the most. Of course they had fought, if they saw him thus. They had fought for years against Meghren. Was that it then, truly? In the end, he was no better than an Orlesian? 

Than those that had had the Rebel Queen murdered. 

For the first time, in a long time, he thought of his father, who had died for Maric, and wondered if it had always been fated. The witch had warned him, in the Korcari Wilds:

_He will betray you, again and again._ Even, it appeared, beyond the grave, in the form of his sons.

He heard a voice, recognized it for who it was: Anora, and quietly gave a little shake of head.

“Anora,” he called, softly breaking the silence, for once just taking in the sight of her. She was so beautiful, as her mother had been, and so capable, and so proud. And so broken by this, he could see it.

_I even let you down, didn’t I?_

“Hush,” he said softly. “It’s over.” She had none of it, and he gave a soft sigh, looking between both women, fully grown now, not children anymore. The future. The now. 

_Please, be kind to Anora, if nothing else. And Anora, don’t let your pride injure you. You get that pride from me…_

“Daughters never grow up, Anora,” he said softly. “They remain six years old with pigtails and skinned knees forever.” Just as he had thought before. Maric’s bastard – Maker, he did look like him, didn’t he? – raised his sword, and Loghain quietly knelt. He fixed his look upon Eideann Cousland one more time.

“Just make it quick?” he asked for them both. “I can face the Maker knowing Ferelden is in _your_ hands.” His eyes skimmed down then to the blade, and he said no prayers for his soul, nothing left now to repent, after everything else. Instead, he studied the glowing runes, and knew it for the sword they had found…Maric’s sword. He gave a quiet smile. 

_Of course._

And then the sword fell down.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to fill in a lot of the gaps we have in Loghain's story with his POV. He's not one to share much about himself, and Dances in Darkness doesn't have any Loghain POV chapters (that I can recall writing), so I really wanted to do this, because in many ways there's a lot of symbolic threads that tie up really nicely with this little piece. So...I'm adding this as part of the Dances in Darkness canon, but also as it's stand-alone, so you don't HAVE to read Dances if you don't want to (though seriously, Dances is my penultimate fic here and you're missing out if you don't as it's got a LOT detail that is brushed over here). ~HR


End file.
